The international community's responsibility to Haiti
By Michael Deibert
The Guardian
12 July 2010
(Please read the original article here)
It is a gloomy anniversary: the six-month mark since the earthquake that levelled vast swaths of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, and surrounding towns, killing well over 200,000 people.
Though the earthquake was promiscuously destructive, killing the good and the bad, the rich and the poor, those who still remain encamped in sprawling tent cities lashed by tropical rains in and around the capital now represent the lowest and most disempowered strata of Haitian society. They are the Haitians who, for generations, have fled the poverty of the countryside to its largest city in search of jobs that were not there and where only further struggle awaited them.
At a time when only 2% of a promised $5.3bn (£3.5bn) in reconstruction aid has materialised and an equally small amount of rubble has been removed, it is worth pausing to remember how economic policy in a very real way helped drive Haitians off their land and into the labyrinthine slums of Port-au-Prince, where so many of them died.
From the 1940s, when the United States sponsored a half-baked attempt to cultivate rubber in Haiti, to the early 1980s, when 1.2m creole pigs were destroyed in a US-Canadian funded programme to prevent the spread of swine fever, the results were largely the same. Life for Haiti's rural poor got worse.
In 1995, an economic adjustment plan mandated by the International Monetary Fund implemented by the government of then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide cut tariffs on rice imports to Haiti from 35% to 3%. Haiti, which for many years had produced low-cost, inexpensive rice for domestic consumption, effectively lost the ability to do so.
And so the heirs of patriotic leaders such as Toussaint L'Ouverture and Charlemagne Péralte ("Les enfants du héros", as the Haitian writer Lyonel Trouillot called them) continued to flood into Port-au-Prince. And six months ago, on a Tuesday afternoon, more of them died there than the mind can really grasp.
Almost surreally, with an estimated 1.5 million Haitians still homeless, presidential and legislative elections are set to be held on 28 November. They will be presided over by an electoral council faced with conducting a legitimate ballot in a country where hundreds of thousands of voters have either been killed or displaced, and during which its own headquarters were destroyed.
Before the earthquake, Haiti had seen a steady, if gradual, improvement in its fortunes. Attracting modest levels of foreign investment and maintaining robust diplomatic relations with neighbours as divergent as the United States, Cuba and Venezuela, the county also enjoyed a more or less extended period of political calm, reinforced by a 10,000-strong United Nations peacekeeping mission (a mission that also suffered grievously that January day).
The wantonly murderous security services and armed civilian bands of regimes past dissipated as, whatever his other faults, President René Préval marked a change in at least this aspect from the litany of rancid despots who have actively victimised the Haitian populace without cease since colonial times.
With no clear successor to Préval, and a series of badly factionalised micro-parties with little popular support, Haitians now face yawning uncertainty. While elections are a favoured means of the international community to point to progress in countries as wracked by poverty and political unrest as Haiti, most Haitians will tell a visitor that such exercises will count for little if not matched by a commitment to changing the destructive dynamic of rural disintegration and urban migration that has taken hold in recent years.
After the earthquake, the Haitian government produced a preliminary damage and needs assessment that envisioned a decentralisation of the Haitian state. To this date, little has come of this promise. A body set up to manage reconstruction funds chaired by Préval's prime minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, and former US president Bill Clinton – a man with a sometimes worrisomely shaky grasp of Haiti's history – has succeeded in drawing pledges of aid but little in concrete results.
It is important on this date, with so many of Haiti's citizens to mourn and so many still waiting for assistance in conditions that can only be characterised as an affront to humanity, that we in the international community not forget our past follies in Haiti.
Before another six months pass, foreign governments, international agencies and non-governmental organisations must quickly and decisively work with Haitians, both urban and rural, on issues such as resettlement, reforestation and agrarian reform, to help them build a decent country out of the rubble of the broken state that came before.
Among all the Haitians I've met in my travels around Haiti, since my first visit there in 1997, a decent country is all most have ever asked for.
Michael Deibert is a visiting fellow at the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies at Coventry University and the author of Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti. His blog can be read at www.michaeldeibert.blogspot.com.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Saturday, July 3, 2010
On the Ground in Haiti
Friday, July 02, 2010
On the Ground in Haiti
By John A. Carroll, M.D.
(Read the original posting here)
My wife Maria and I worked in Haiti during part of the months of May and June. We stayed in a guesthouse-orphanage just outside of Port-au-Prince.
A lady named Yolande lived right across the street from us.
Yolande is 78 years old and lives under a blue tarpaulin which encloses a small pup tent inside.
During the earthquake on January 12 her shack, which was located several miles away, was so damaged that she had to move out. Yolande suffered some leg injuries at the time of the quake and still has one lower leg wrapped in a rag. But Yolande smiled and told me that her legs were "much better".
One afternoon shortly after we arrived, I entered an opening in Yolande's blue tarp. The stifling heat, humidity, mosquitoes, and flies were overwhelming.
The tarp was fastened to thin wooden poles and tied above with shoe laces and other fragments of cloth.
Yolande's family brings her rice and vegetables when they can and she cooks in a metal bowl over pieces of charcoal.
I found Yolande to be a practical and pleasant woman. She did not complain about her living arrangements and even said that Americans are the most charitable people in the world. I sure did not feel that way right then as I hurried out from under the tarp so I could get a breath of cooler air in the street.
During this time of the year in Haiti, the rain comes in torrents in the late afternoon or evening, and now this rain seeps through Yolande's tarp and leaks into her tent. So on top of roasting, Yolande and her family are wet much of the time too.
These hardships are not isolated to Yolande.
Haiti has an estimated 9 million people with one third of the population living in the capital, Port-au-Prince. In this city there are over one thousand tent cities, and an estimated 1.5 million people are still homeless five months after the quake. Many people told me that they are simply too afraid to move back inside of their houses. If their houses are still standing, the walls may have been fissure (cracked) and people fear they will collapse on top of them.
Several miles from us downtown Port-au-Prince looks like a nuclear bomb struck it. The once beautiful Haitian National Palace is collapsed and the majority of nearby Haitian government ministry buildings downtown were destroyed in the 47 second earthquake. Haiti's tax building is pancaked just across from the Palace with its director's body and many employees still inside under tons of concrete.
A densely populated tent city now sits in front of the vacant Palace in Port-au-Prince's largest square called Champs de Mars. A young man who identified himself as Carlos told me some of their problems after I walked through his section of the tent city. Carlos seemed fatalistic and did not see any end in sight to their misery.
Rape is common in Port-au-Prince's tent cities and seldom gets reported. Poor women in tent cities have no rights.
Fountains and small decorative pools in Champs de Mar have turned into large toilets filled with stagnant sewage. Kids play nearby with their family's tent abutting these toxic cesspools. Sewage drainage and treatment facilities are more or less nonexistent.
In the chaotic months following the quake, millions of dollars flowed into Haiti from generous people all over the world. (One out of two American households gave to the Haitian relief efforts.)
And five billion more dollars from the international community has been pledged to Haiti over the next two years. Bill Clinton who is UN Special Envoy to Haiti. Recently Mr. Clinton along with Haitian officials have been in charge of the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission. One of the objectives of this Commission is to allocate these funds to ensure that the money is used in a transparent fashion for Haiti's post earthquake reconstruction.
Mr. Clinton and Haiti's Prime Minister Bellerive announced the Commission's first approved spending projects:
- $45 million from Brazil and Norway in direct funds for the Haitian government, closing a quarter of its estimated $170 million budget shortfall.
- $1 million from the Clinton Foundation for buildings that can be used as storm shelters in the quake-ravaged towns of Leogane and Jacmel, which are often in the path of Atlantic hurricanes.
- A $20 million fund to provide loans to small- and medium-sized Haitian businesses.
But despite international pledges of some $5 billion over two years at the United Nations donors' conference for Haiti in March, only a fraction has actually been delivered - just $40 million from Brazil.
Even though other pledges are supposed to be delivered soon, I spoke to no Haitians during our entire time in Haiti who trusts that the money will be spent properly. People that I spoke with don't really trust Mr. Clinton any more than they do their own fragmented and dysfunctional government. Many are very angry with Haitian President Preval for his perceived lack of leadership and poor communication through Haiti's largest crisis in its history. They also feel he is cuddling up to international powers for business interests that will exclude the majority of poor Haitians.
And why should 9 million poor Haitians trust any one? They and their ancestors have been on the short end of the stick since Haiti was founded as a Republic more than 200 years ago. The corrupt Haitian state is considered to be a fact of life... not unlike corrupt Illinois politics.
So what do "we" do with hundreds of thousands of displaced and homeless Haitian people? Although Haitians are a tough lot, they are not as resilient as our defense mechanisms would like us to believe. And on top of this earthquake which was "biblical" in size, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted a terrible tropical storm season coming Haiti's way in several months.
But so far (as of this writing) the Haitian government has relocated only about 7,000vulnerable people to two safer camps. The relocation is slow because the crippled government doesn't have enough money to complete a job that includes not just setting up new tents, but providing work, schools and services.
First of all, should the tent cities continue to exist? Are they good enough?
No. These places are inhuman and horrible. Lack of food and water, lack of security, and the rain are a few reasons.
And the rain is quickly bringing more problems.
Malaria and typhoid fever were everyday occurrences in the area of the city where I was working. Stagnant dirty puddles of water are everywhere and are good breeding grounds for mosquitoes who will carry disease. I saw a teen-aged boy scooping up water in his hands drinking from a puddle in the road. Medical and public health interventions will not help the majority of Haitians unless their dangerous living environment is changed.
Also, heavy rains tempt unstable hillsides to unleash their mud. And serious flooding and mudslides could endanger not only Haitians but relief workers also.
Port-au-Prince, before the earthquake could have accommodated 300,000 people, not three million people. There has been decades of urban decay. This city is doomed right now unless a paradigm shift in thinking takes place.
We need to be honest and understand that many people are dying now and are still going to die no matter what is done. I saw children starving in front of me. I often wondered what good was my stethoscope in times like this.
So what needs to happen? What interventions will minimize the final death count? How can Haiti's problems be prioritized and triaged appropriately? What can be done to give some dignity to the life of over one million displaced Haitians? How do we stop the violence aimed at Haitian society's unfortunate losers?
Haitians tell me they want jobs. Who would have thought?
Jobs earn them money to repair their lives and their family's lives. Jobs allow one parent to stay at home during the day and take care of their babies and toddlers. Kids suffer alot mentally and physically when they are alone or being watched by a neighbor who is already swamped with problems. Children are literally down in the dirt and sewage and their chances for survival diminish without a parent home.
Mother's can breastfeed if they are home. And when mother's breastfeed, they save money because they do not need to purchase milk. And if they purchase powdered milk, they may accidentally prepare it with dirty water which can sicken their children.
With the billions of dollars that hopefully will come to Haiti, big firms with heavy equipment should be hired. Skillful urban planners from all over the world need to work with the Haitian government.
And most importantly poor Haitians need to be hired.
Hundreds of thousands of young, strong Haitian men and women that live in the capital would jump at the chance for a job. Hire them and pay them fairly so they can feed their families while they make a new and better Haiti. The billions of dollars of international pledges need to go for displaced Haitians while they perform the back breaking reconstruction of Haiti.
Pay Haitians in tent cities to repair or rebuild their own homes--the structures where they were living pre earthquake. Or pay the man that rents the home to these people. And these homes need to be earthquake proof homes using Western building codes. Earthquakes don't kill people, bad buildings do.
The huge mounds of rubble on the Port-au-Prince streets needs to be cleared so the streets can be navigated by cars and big equipment.
The traffic jams in the capital now slow progress for everyone.
Many people have returned to their neighborhoods after inspections found their homes safe, but often return to the tent camps when word of aid distribution spreads. So food and water distribution needs to be local--- brought to people in their neighborhoods as their homes are rebuilt.
Port-au-Prince needs to be decentralized. The earthquake negatively influenced 80% of Haiti's economy because PAP was and is the hub of the country. Now the hub is critically ill. The capital is built over fault lines and this all could happen again. Three million miserable people living on top of each other need to be spread back out to Haiti's provinces.
But for people to move to the Haitian countryside or smaller cities outside of PAP, there has to be jobs, family members with adequate housing that can accept their homeless relatives, and some basic services like schools, roads, water, electricity, and medical care.
Trees need to be planted and gardens started in these communities. Listening to Haitian grass roots organizations and the Haitian farmer is very important. These people know what they need to stay alive.
The local Haitian community in the province needs to be involved in all decision points.
Foreign aid that flowed into Haiti after the quake has hurt the Haitian farmers. Most of the people in Haiti's central plateau (L'Artibonite) earn their living by growing and selling rice, Haiti’s staple food. But the influx of foreign food aid has meant that many Haitians can now get rice for free. As a result, the price of rice grown in Haiti has plummeted and the Haitian farmer finds himself in more trouble.
Several months ago even Mr. Clinton was quoted as saying, "...we made a devil's bargain" when he was President. He publicly apologized for forcing Haiti to drop tariffs on imported, subsidized US rice. His policy hurt Haitian rice farming and, as reported by Kim Ives, "seriously damaged Haiti's ability to be self sufficient".
And let us not forget that Haiti, believe it or not, is in the digital age. The Haitian people in the countryside have cell phones and access to the Internet. Many Haitians are adept at using both. This means that they still communicate with Haitian relatives, the diaspora, overseas.
Haiti's diaspora has sent back billions of dollars over the past few decades to needy Haitian relatives, but this obviously has not been enough. The diaspora need to physically come back to Haiti and revitalize Haiti's industrial sector. But they won't come back and invest in Haiti unless than can do so safely. Most diaspora tell me they fear for their personal safety in Haiti. Security everywhere needs to be improved. And the economic climate for joint business ventures, to stimulate Haiti's diaspora to invest in Haiti, has to be improved by the Haitian government.
In conclusion, Haiti was a severely damaged country before the January earthquake and is even more damaged now.
Haitians are a beautiful and wonderful people, but they are not as "resilient" as we would like to believe.
Yolande, the little old tent lady who lived near us, should not be living like this. If Yolande were your grandmother, you wouldn't refer to her as "resilient" as she suffers the Haitian heat and mosquitoes, would you?
The huge international monetary pledges need to be allocated in a transparent fashion to help these neediest Haitians.
On the Ground in Haiti
By John A. Carroll, M.D.
(Read the original posting here)
My wife Maria and I worked in Haiti during part of the months of May and June. We stayed in a guesthouse-orphanage just outside of Port-au-Prince.
A lady named Yolande lived right across the street from us.
Yolande is 78 years old and lives under a blue tarpaulin which encloses a small pup tent inside.
During the earthquake on January 12 her shack, which was located several miles away, was so damaged that she had to move out. Yolande suffered some leg injuries at the time of the quake and still has one lower leg wrapped in a rag. But Yolande smiled and told me that her legs were "much better".
One afternoon shortly after we arrived, I entered an opening in Yolande's blue tarp. The stifling heat, humidity, mosquitoes, and flies were overwhelming.
The tarp was fastened to thin wooden poles and tied above with shoe laces and other fragments of cloth.
Yolande's family brings her rice and vegetables when they can and she cooks in a metal bowl over pieces of charcoal.
I found Yolande to be a practical and pleasant woman. She did not complain about her living arrangements and even said that Americans are the most charitable people in the world. I sure did not feel that way right then as I hurried out from under the tarp so I could get a breath of cooler air in the street.
During this time of the year in Haiti, the rain comes in torrents in the late afternoon or evening, and now this rain seeps through Yolande's tarp and leaks into her tent. So on top of roasting, Yolande and her family are wet much of the time too.
These hardships are not isolated to Yolande.
Haiti has an estimated 9 million people with one third of the population living in the capital, Port-au-Prince. In this city there are over one thousand tent cities, and an estimated 1.5 million people are still homeless five months after the quake. Many people told me that they are simply too afraid to move back inside of their houses. If their houses are still standing, the walls may have been fissure (cracked) and people fear they will collapse on top of them.
Several miles from us downtown Port-au-Prince looks like a nuclear bomb struck it. The once beautiful Haitian National Palace is collapsed and the majority of nearby Haitian government ministry buildings downtown were destroyed in the 47 second earthquake. Haiti's tax building is pancaked just across from the Palace with its director's body and many employees still inside under tons of concrete.
A densely populated tent city now sits in front of the vacant Palace in Port-au-Prince's largest square called Champs de Mars. A young man who identified himself as Carlos told me some of their problems after I walked through his section of the tent city. Carlos seemed fatalistic and did not see any end in sight to their misery.
Rape is common in Port-au-Prince's tent cities and seldom gets reported. Poor women in tent cities have no rights.
Fountains and small decorative pools in Champs de Mar have turned into large toilets filled with stagnant sewage. Kids play nearby with their family's tent abutting these toxic cesspools. Sewage drainage and treatment facilities are more or less nonexistent.
In the chaotic months following the quake, millions of dollars flowed into Haiti from generous people all over the world. (One out of two American households gave to the Haitian relief efforts.)
And five billion more dollars from the international community has been pledged to Haiti over the next two years. Bill Clinton who is UN Special Envoy to Haiti. Recently Mr. Clinton along with Haitian officials have been in charge of the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission. One of the objectives of this Commission is to allocate these funds to ensure that the money is used in a transparent fashion for Haiti's post earthquake reconstruction.
Mr. Clinton and Haiti's Prime Minister Bellerive announced the Commission's first approved spending projects:
- $45 million from Brazil and Norway in direct funds for the Haitian government, closing a quarter of its estimated $170 million budget shortfall.
- $1 million from the Clinton Foundation for buildings that can be used as storm shelters in the quake-ravaged towns of Leogane and Jacmel, which are often in the path of Atlantic hurricanes.
- A $20 million fund to provide loans to small- and medium-sized Haitian businesses.
But despite international pledges of some $5 billion over two years at the United Nations donors' conference for Haiti in March, only a fraction has actually been delivered - just $40 million from Brazil.
Even though other pledges are supposed to be delivered soon, I spoke to no Haitians during our entire time in Haiti who trusts that the money will be spent properly. People that I spoke with don't really trust Mr. Clinton any more than they do their own fragmented and dysfunctional government. Many are very angry with Haitian President Preval for his perceived lack of leadership and poor communication through Haiti's largest crisis in its history. They also feel he is cuddling up to international powers for business interests that will exclude the majority of poor Haitians.
And why should 9 million poor Haitians trust any one? They and their ancestors have been on the short end of the stick since Haiti was founded as a Republic more than 200 years ago. The corrupt Haitian state is considered to be a fact of life... not unlike corrupt Illinois politics.
So what do "we" do with hundreds of thousands of displaced and homeless Haitian people? Although Haitians are a tough lot, they are not as resilient as our defense mechanisms would like us to believe. And on top of this earthquake which was "biblical" in size, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted a terrible tropical storm season coming Haiti's way in several months.
But so far (as of this writing) the Haitian government has relocated only about 7,000vulnerable people to two safer camps. The relocation is slow because the crippled government doesn't have enough money to complete a job that includes not just setting up new tents, but providing work, schools and services.
First of all, should the tent cities continue to exist? Are they good enough?
No. These places are inhuman and horrible. Lack of food and water, lack of security, and the rain are a few reasons.
And the rain is quickly bringing more problems.
Malaria and typhoid fever were everyday occurrences in the area of the city where I was working. Stagnant dirty puddles of water are everywhere and are good breeding grounds for mosquitoes who will carry disease. I saw a teen-aged boy scooping up water in his hands drinking from a puddle in the road. Medical and public health interventions will not help the majority of Haitians unless their dangerous living environment is changed.
Also, heavy rains tempt unstable hillsides to unleash their mud. And serious flooding and mudslides could endanger not only Haitians but relief workers also.
Port-au-Prince, before the earthquake could have accommodated 300,000 people, not three million people. There has been decades of urban decay. This city is doomed right now unless a paradigm shift in thinking takes place.
We need to be honest and understand that many people are dying now and are still going to die no matter what is done. I saw children starving in front of me. I often wondered what good was my stethoscope in times like this.
So what needs to happen? What interventions will minimize the final death count? How can Haiti's problems be prioritized and triaged appropriately? What can be done to give some dignity to the life of over one million displaced Haitians? How do we stop the violence aimed at Haitian society's unfortunate losers?
Haitians tell me they want jobs. Who would have thought?
Jobs earn them money to repair their lives and their family's lives. Jobs allow one parent to stay at home during the day and take care of their babies and toddlers. Kids suffer alot mentally and physically when they are alone or being watched by a neighbor who is already swamped with problems. Children are literally down in the dirt and sewage and their chances for survival diminish without a parent home.
Mother's can breastfeed if they are home. And when mother's breastfeed, they save money because they do not need to purchase milk. And if they purchase powdered milk, they may accidentally prepare it with dirty water which can sicken their children.
With the billions of dollars that hopefully will come to Haiti, big firms with heavy equipment should be hired. Skillful urban planners from all over the world need to work with the Haitian government.
And most importantly poor Haitians need to be hired.
Hundreds of thousands of young, strong Haitian men and women that live in the capital would jump at the chance for a job. Hire them and pay them fairly so they can feed their families while they make a new and better Haiti. The billions of dollars of international pledges need to go for displaced Haitians while they perform the back breaking reconstruction of Haiti.
Pay Haitians in tent cities to repair or rebuild their own homes--the structures where they were living pre earthquake. Or pay the man that rents the home to these people. And these homes need to be earthquake proof homes using Western building codes. Earthquakes don't kill people, bad buildings do.
The huge mounds of rubble on the Port-au-Prince streets needs to be cleared so the streets can be navigated by cars and big equipment.
The traffic jams in the capital now slow progress for everyone.
Many people have returned to their neighborhoods after inspections found their homes safe, but often return to the tent camps when word of aid distribution spreads. So food and water distribution needs to be local--- brought to people in their neighborhoods as their homes are rebuilt.
Port-au-Prince needs to be decentralized. The earthquake negatively influenced 80% of Haiti's economy because PAP was and is the hub of the country. Now the hub is critically ill. The capital is built over fault lines and this all could happen again. Three million miserable people living on top of each other need to be spread back out to Haiti's provinces.
But for people to move to the Haitian countryside or smaller cities outside of PAP, there has to be jobs, family members with adequate housing that can accept their homeless relatives, and some basic services like schools, roads, water, electricity, and medical care.
Trees need to be planted and gardens started in these communities. Listening to Haitian grass roots organizations and the Haitian farmer is very important. These people know what they need to stay alive.
The local Haitian community in the province needs to be involved in all decision points.
Foreign aid that flowed into Haiti after the quake has hurt the Haitian farmers. Most of the people in Haiti's central plateau (L'Artibonite) earn their living by growing and selling rice, Haiti’s staple food. But the influx of foreign food aid has meant that many Haitians can now get rice for free. As a result, the price of rice grown in Haiti has plummeted and the Haitian farmer finds himself in more trouble.
Several months ago even Mr. Clinton was quoted as saying, "...we made a devil's bargain" when he was President. He publicly apologized for forcing Haiti to drop tariffs on imported, subsidized US rice. His policy hurt Haitian rice farming and, as reported by Kim Ives, "seriously damaged Haiti's ability to be self sufficient".
And let us not forget that Haiti, believe it or not, is in the digital age. The Haitian people in the countryside have cell phones and access to the Internet. Many Haitians are adept at using both. This means that they still communicate with Haitian relatives, the diaspora, overseas.
Haiti's diaspora has sent back billions of dollars over the past few decades to needy Haitian relatives, but this obviously has not been enough. The diaspora need to physically come back to Haiti and revitalize Haiti's industrial sector. But they won't come back and invest in Haiti unless than can do so safely. Most diaspora tell me they fear for their personal safety in Haiti. Security everywhere needs to be improved. And the economic climate for joint business ventures, to stimulate Haiti's diaspora to invest in Haiti, has to be improved by the Haitian government.
In conclusion, Haiti was a severely damaged country before the January earthquake and is even more damaged now.
Haitians are a beautiful and wonderful people, but they are not as "resilient" as we would like to believe.
Yolande, the little old tent lady who lived near us, should not be living like this. If Yolande were your grandmother, you wouldn't refer to her as "resilient" as she suffers the Haitian heat and mosquitoes, would you?
The huge international monetary pledges need to be allocated in a transparent fashion to help these neediest Haitians.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Décès de l’ancien premier ministre Marc Louis Bazin
Haiti-Politique
Décès de l’ancien premier ministre Marc Louis Bazin
Une des figures de proue de la scène politique haïtienne des 25 dernières années
mercredi 16 juin 2010,
Radio Kiskeya
(Read the original article here)
L’ancien premier ministre Marc Louis Bazin (78 ans) est décédé d’un cancer tôt mercredi matin en sa résidence à Thomassin (Pétion Ville, Est de Port-au-Prince).
Un de ses cousins, Jean Max Bazin, qui a confirmé la nouvelle de ce décès au micro de Radio Kiskeya, a précisé que la famille s’attendait depuis quelque temps à ce triste événement, mais qu’elle a été tout de même surprise qu’il se soit si vite produit. Il a assuré que la famille allait faire face avec courage à cette disparition.
Economiste, ancien fonctionnaire international au Maroc et à la Banque Mondiale, Marc Bazin a fait son entrée sur la scène politique haïtienne au cours de la seconde moitié des années 80. Surnommé alors « Mister Clean » et jouissant de la réputation d’être « l’homme des Américains », Marc L. Bazin entra au gouvernement de Jean Claude Duvalier (Baby Doc) au poste de Ministre de l’Economie et des Finances. Il devait en sortir sans avoir rempli la mission qu’il avait vraisemblablement d’assainir les comptes et d’ajuster l’économie selon alors les prescrits des institutions de Bretton Woods.
Marc Bazin allait par la suite revenir sur la scène politique par le biais de la formation politique qu’il avait créée, le Mouvement pour l’Instauration de la Démocratie en Haiti (MIDH). Sous la bannière de l’Alliance Nationale pour la Démocratie et le Progrès (ANDP), avec le PANPRA et le MNP-28 de Serges Gilles et Déjean Bélizaire respectivement, Marc Bazin brigua la présidence en 1990 face à Jean Bertrand Aristide qui fut alors élu largement président.
Marc Bazin refit surface à titre de premier ministre « de facto » en remplacement de l’agronome Jean Jacques Honorat qui fut nommé chef du gouvernement par les auteurs du sanglant coup d’Etat qui avait renversé le président constitutionnel le 30 septembre 1991.
Avec les militaires également, Marc Bazin n’eut pas la partie belle. Il dut laisser le gouvernement par la « petite porte », humilié par les putschistes. Marc Bazin devait malgré tout faire partie de l’un des gouvernements de l’après coup d’Etat.
Après une longue période de retrait suite à cette nouvelle expérience, Marc Bazin devait refaire surface dans les colonnes du quotidien Le Nouvelliste où il tint une rubrique d’analyses sociopolitiques et de mise en perspective des plus importants dossiers d’actualité.
Quelques semaines avant sa mort, Marc Bazin s’est allié aux ex-premier ministres Robert Malval, Jean Marie Chérestal, Yvon Neptune, Jacques Edouard Alexis et Rosny Smarth pour produire des réflexions et adopter des positions sur la difficile situation politico-sociale créée dans le pays par le séisme dévastateur du 12 janvier 2010. [jmd/Radio Kiskeya]
Décès de l’ancien premier ministre Marc Louis Bazin
Une des figures de proue de la scène politique haïtienne des 25 dernières années
mercredi 16 juin 2010,
Radio Kiskeya
(Read the original article here)
L’ancien premier ministre Marc Louis Bazin (78 ans) est décédé d’un cancer tôt mercredi matin en sa résidence à Thomassin (Pétion Ville, Est de Port-au-Prince).
Un de ses cousins, Jean Max Bazin, qui a confirmé la nouvelle de ce décès au micro de Radio Kiskeya, a précisé que la famille s’attendait depuis quelque temps à ce triste événement, mais qu’elle a été tout de même surprise qu’il se soit si vite produit. Il a assuré que la famille allait faire face avec courage à cette disparition.
Economiste, ancien fonctionnaire international au Maroc et à la Banque Mondiale, Marc Bazin a fait son entrée sur la scène politique haïtienne au cours de la seconde moitié des années 80. Surnommé alors « Mister Clean » et jouissant de la réputation d’être « l’homme des Américains », Marc L. Bazin entra au gouvernement de Jean Claude Duvalier (Baby Doc) au poste de Ministre de l’Economie et des Finances. Il devait en sortir sans avoir rempli la mission qu’il avait vraisemblablement d’assainir les comptes et d’ajuster l’économie selon alors les prescrits des institutions de Bretton Woods.
Marc Bazin allait par la suite revenir sur la scène politique par le biais de la formation politique qu’il avait créée, le Mouvement pour l’Instauration de la Démocratie en Haiti (MIDH). Sous la bannière de l’Alliance Nationale pour la Démocratie et le Progrès (ANDP), avec le PANPRA et le MNP-28 de Serges Gilles et Déjean Bélizaire respectivement, Marc Bazin brigua la présidence en 1990 face à Jean Bertrand Aristide qui fut alors élu largement président.
Marc Bazin refit surface à titre de premier ministre « de facto » en remplacement de l’agronome Jean Jacques Honorat qui fut nommé chef du gouvernement par les auteurs du sanglant coup d’Etat qui avait renversé le président constitutionnel le 30 septembre 1991.
Avec les militaires également, Marc Bazin n’eut pas la partie belle. Il dut laisser le gouvernement par la « petite porte », humilié par les putschistes. Marc Bazin devait malgré tout faire partie de l’un des gouvernements de l’après coup d’Etat.
Après une longue période de retrait suite à cette nouvelle expérience, Marc Bazin devait refaire surface dans les colonnes du quotidien Le Nouvelliste où il tint une rubrique d’analyses sociopolitiques et de mise en perspective des plus importants dossiers d’actualité.
Quelques semaines avant sa mort, Marc Bazin s’est allié aux ex-premier ministres Robert Malval, Jean Marie Chérestal, Yvon Neptune, Jacques Edouard Alexis et Rosny Smarth pour produire des réflexions et adopter des positions sur la difficile situation politico-sociale créée dans le pays par le séisme dévastateur du 12 janvier 2010. [jmd/Radio Kiskeya]
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Good neighbours?
Good neighbours?
Published: June 08, 2010
Foreign Direct Investment
Haiti and the Dominican Republic have endured a fraught relationship over the past 200 years, but could the latter’s response to the former’s recent earthquake lead to a more mutually beneficial partnership in the future? Michael Deibert investigates.
(Read the original article here)
When an earthquake devastated a large section of Haiti in January, no country responded more empathically than the Dominican Republic, which shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with Haiti.
Despite what has been an often stormy and distrustful relationship between the two countries – due in large part to the many Haitian occupations of the Dominican Republic, as well as the long history of abuses committed against the almost 1 million Haitians living in the Dominican Republic – Dominicans almost immediately began fundraising drives and gathered supplies. These were then ferried across the border to Haiti by a combination of local relief organisations and ordinary citizens.
“I had been visiting Haiti for such a long time, and have such good friends over there, that I knew I had to do my best to help,” says Juan Pablo Fernandez, president of Químicos & Plásticos, a Dominican company that supplies raw materials to the industries of both nations. After the earthquake, Mr Fernandez and his employees joined other Dominican businesses in transporting privately donated relief supplies to Haiti’s stricken capital, Port-au-Prince.
The Dominican response to the earthquake just might have eased some of the mutual recrimination brought on by an oft-tragic shared history stretching back two centuries.
In 1822, then Haitian president Jean-Pierre Boyer invaded the eastern part of the Dominican Republic. Despite this, country succeeded in declaring its independence in 1844. Another Haitian leader, Faustin Soulouque, who would go on to declare himself emperor of Haiti, then invaded the Dominican Republic twice.
In 1937, following the expulsion of Haitian cane cutters by Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, even more Haitian labourers flooded the Dominican Republic, then led by dictator Rafael Trujillo, who would rule the country from 1930 until his murder in 1961. That October, under Mr Trujillo’s orders and for reasons that still remain unclear, Dominican soldiers and police massacred an estimated 20,000 Haitians.
Haitians continue to stream into the Dominican Republic looking for work today, even though they continue to face “severe discrimination”, according to the 2009 Human Rights Report issued by the US State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. But though both countries have experienced authoritarian regimes and high levels of corruption, their economic and investment portfolios paint a markedly different picture, analysts say, especially over the past two decades.
Revealing data
Before the earthquake, according to the CIA’s World Factbook, the GDP real growth rate for the Dominican Republic was 1.8% during 2009, and the GDP per capita was $8300. In Haiti, these figures were 2% and $1300, respectively. While average life expectancy for the Dominican Republic is 73 years, the figure in Haiti is just 57 years. To add to Haiti’s woes, according to its government’s Preliminary Damage and Needs Assessment, the damage bill from January’s earthquake was in the region of $7.9bn.
While two-thirds of Dominican exports remain bound for the US, foreign remittances, mostly from the US, continue to account for nearly one-tenth of the country’s GDP, and there remains a robust tourism industry. Boasting the largest economy in the Caribbean, the Dominican Republic currently has approximately 50 free trade zone parks, producing everything from textiles to electronic devices and pharmaceuticals. The country’s financial sector has also largely stabilised since the collapse of its second-largest bank, Banco Intercontinental, in 2003, which had to be bailed out by the Dominican treasury at a cost of some $2.2bn.
“Business is increasing on a daily basis [in the Dominican Republic] and there is much optimism,” says Aryam Vázquez, an economist who covers country risk for Wells Fargo’s emerging markets unit in New York. “The banking sector is much better regulated than in the past, and we have seen concerted efforts by successive governments to stabilise the domestic demand market.”
Across the border
Before the earthquake, Haiti seemed to be regaining some of its financial footing following the chaotic presidency of Jean-Bertrand Aristide between 2001 and 2004 and the often erratic rule of the interim government that replaced him. Relations between Dominican president Leonel Fernández, in office since August 2004, and Haitian president René Préval, who has governed since May 2006, are said to be warm. During their mutual first term in office in the 1990s, Mr Fernández made the first official state visit by a Dominican leader to Haiti since the 1937 massacres.
Political instability in Haiti has led to environmental degradation and economic atrophy. While Haiti was ruled by a series of ravenous civilian and military dictatorships for much of the past 50 years, Joaquín Balaguer, a long-time Trujillo consigliere who led a series of authoritarian governments in the Dominican Republic over the past half-century, was taking steps to prevent the country from sliding into the environmental disaster that was befalling Haiti, including using the Dominican army to prevent extensive deforestation. Haiti, on the other hand, has lost 90% of its tree cover over the past 60 years (and about one-tenth between 1990 and 2000), with the resulting erosion destroying two-thirds of the country’s arable farmland.
Hope beyond the despair
Despite such statistics, there is hope that out of the tragedy of January’s earthquake there lies an opportunity to help Haiti advance beyond the modest improvements in economic stability and security of recent years.
Haiti’s garment industry, once a pillar of its economy, has benefitted in recent years from measures that provided certain Haitian textiles with duty-free status when entering the US. Last year, Haitian firm the WIN Group, along with the Soros Economic Development Fund, announced their intention to construct a $45m industrial park in Port-au-Prince’s Cité Soleil slum region, a project that has been put on hold in the aftermath of the earthquake.
The OTF Group, a competitiveness consulting firm, has continued to advocate for the creation of “growth clusters” around Haiti, a proposal that fits closely with the Haitian government’s desire for decentralisation, economic diversification and the “decongestion” of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area, rather than rebuilding as before.
Such measures might well provide a possible future at home for the Haitians currently living in the Dominican Republic and spell a less fractious new era for two nations whose economic destinies, despite frequent tensions, remain inextricably linked.
Published: June 08, 2010
Foreign Direct Investment
Haiti and the Dominican Republic have endured a fraught relationship over the past 200 years, but could the latter’s response to the former’s recent earthquake lead to a more mutually beneficial partnership in the future? Michael Deibert investigates.
(Read the original article here)
When an earthquake devastated a large section of Haiti in January, no country responded more empathically than the Dominican Republic, which shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with Haiti.
Despite what has been an often stormy and distrustful relationship between the two countries – due in large part to the many Haitian occupations of the Dominican Republic, as well as the long history of abuses committed against the almost 1 million Haitians living in the Dominican Republic – Dominicans almost immediately began fundraising drives and gathered supplies. These were then ferried across the border to Haiti by a combination of local relief organisations and ordinary citizens.
“I had been visiting Haiti for such a long time, and have such good friends over there, that I knew I had to do my best to help,” says Juan Pablo Fernandez, president of Químicos & Plásticos, a Dominican company that supplies raw materials to the industries of both nations. After the earthquake, Mr Fernandez and his employees joined other Dominican businesses in transporting privately donated relief supplies to Haiti’s stricken capital, Port-au-Prince.
The Dominican response to the earthquake just might have eased some of the mutual recrimination brought on by an oft-tragic shared history stretching back two centuries.
In 1822, then Haitian president Jean-Pierre Boyer invaded the eastern part of the Dominican Republic. Despite this, country succeeded in declaring its independence in 1844. Another Haitian leader, Faustin Soulouque, who would go on to declare himself emperor of Haiti, then invaded the Dominican Republic twice.
In 1937, following the expulsion of Haitian cane cutters by Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, even more Haitian labourers flooded the Dominican Republic, then led by dictator Rafael Trujillo, who would rule the country from 1930 until his murder in 1961. That October, under Mr Trujillo’s orders and for reasons that still remain unclear, Dominican soldiers and police massacred an estimated 20,000 Haitians.
Haitians continue to stream into the Dominican Republic looking for work today, even though they continue to face “severe discrimination”, according to the 2009 Human Rights Report issued by the US State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. But though both countries have experienced authoritarian regimes and high levels of corruption, their economic and investment portfolios paint a markedly different picture, analysts say, especially over the past two decades.
Revealing data
Before the earthquake, according to the CIA’s World Factbook, the GDP real growth rate for the Dominican Republic was 1.8% during 2009, and the GDP per capita was $8300. In Haiti, these figures were 2% and $1300, respectively. While average life expectancy for the Dominican Republic is 73 years, the figure in Haiti is just 57 years. To add to Haiti’s woes, according to its government’s Preliminary Damage and Needs Assessment, the damage bill from January’s earthquake was in the region of $7.9bn.
While two-thirds of Dominican exports remain bound for the US, foreign remittances, mostly from the US, continue to account for nearly one-tenth of the country’s GDP, and there remains a robust tourism industry. Boasting the largest economy in the Caribbean, the Dominican Republic currently has approximately 50 free trade zone parks, producing everything from textiles to electronic devices and pharmaceuticals. The country’s financial sector has also largely stabilised since the collapse of its second-largest bank, Banco Intercontinental, in 2003, which had to be bailed out by the Dominican treasury at a cost of some $2.2bn.
“Business is increasing on a daily basis [in the Dominican Republic] and there is much optimism,” says Aryam Vázquez, an economist who covers country risk for Wells Fargo’s emerging markets unit in New York. “The banking sector is much better regulated than in the past, and we have seen concerted efforts by successive governments to stabilise the domestic demand market.”
Across the border
Before the earthquake, Haiti seemed to be regaining some of its financial footing following the chaotic presidency of Jean-Bertrand Aristide between 2001 and 2004 and the often erratic rule of the interim government that replaced him. Relations between Dominican president Leonel Fernández, in office since August 2004, and Haitian president René Préval, who has governed since May 2006, are said to be warm. During their mutual first term in office in the 1990s, Mr Fernández made the first official state visit by a Dominican leader to Haiti since the 1937 massacres.
Political instability in Haiti has led to environmental degradation and economic atrophy. While Haiti was ruled by a series of ravenous civilian and military dictatorships for much of the past 50 years, Joaquín Balaguer, a long-time Trujillo consigliere who led a series of authoritarian governments in the Dominican Republic over the past half-century, was taking steps to prevent the country from sliding into the environmental disaster that was befalling Haiti, including using the Dominican army to prevent extensive deforestation. Haiti, on the other hand, has lost 90% of its tree cover over the past 60 years (and about one-tenth between 1990 and 2000), with the resulting erosion destroying two-thirds of the country’s arable farmland.
Hope beyond the despair
Despite such statistics, there is hope that out of the tragedy of January’s earthquake there lies an opportunity to help Haiti advance beyond the modest improvements in economic stability and security of recent years.
Haiti’s garment industry, once a pillar of its economy, has benefitted in recent years from measures that provided certain Haitian textiles with duty-free status when entering the US. Last year, Haitian firm the WIN Group, along with the Soros Economic Development Fund, announced their intention to construct a $45m industrial park in Port-au-Prince’s Cité Soleil slum region, a project that has been put on hold in the aftermath of the earthquake.
The OTF Group, a competitiveness consulting firm, has continued to advocate for the creation of “growth clusters” around Haiti, a proposal that fits closely with the Haitian government’s desire for decentralisation, economic diversification and the “decongestion” of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area, rather than rebuilding as before.
Such measures might well provide a possible future at home for the Haitians currently living in the Dominican Republic and spell a less fractious new era for two nations whose economic destinies, despite frequent tensions, remain inextricably linked.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Haitian farmers protest Monsanto seed donations
Jun 04, 2010
Haitian farmers protest Monsanto seed donations
By Alice Speri
AFP
HINCHE, Haiti - Thousands of farmers marched in central Haiti Friday claiming the government was misleading them with seed donations from US multinational Monsanto.
The region was spared the worst of the January quake which leveled much of the capital Port-au-Prince, but with a dire shortage of seeds in the Caribbean country farmers are struggling to get the supplies to work their land.
Giant company Monsanto is donating 475 tons of maize to Haitian farmers in cooperation with Project Winner, a USAID initiative, which aims to increase the country's agricultural productivity, the agriculture ministry said.
But farmers fear they are being given seeds which could threaten local varieties.
"The Haitian government is using the earthquake to sell the country to the multinationals," charged Jean Baptiste Chavannes, coordinator of the Mouvman Peyizan Papay (MPP), a farming cooperative and one of the leading organizations in Haiti's peasant movement.
Sporting red shirts and straw hats sprayed in signs against President Rene Preval and Monsanto, people rallied under a hot sun in the town of Hinche.
Demonstrators chanted "Down with Preval," "Keep Monsanto Out of Haiti" and the occasional "Down with the Occupation."
Kettly Alexandre, an organizer with the MPP said they estimated the number of participants was between 8,000 and 12,000. There was no immediate confirmation from police.
"We have to fight for our local seeds," Chavannes told the crowd. "We have to defend our food sovereignty."
"This is not just about the seeds," argued Samuel Smith, a 74-year-old organic farmer and long-time supporter of local agriculture, who came for the rally from Massachusetts. "It's about imposing on people a system that they can't get out of."
Monsanto however dismissed fears it was donating genetically modified seeds to the country.
"The seeds Monsanto is donating to Haiti are not genetically modified. They are conventional hybrid seeds that are already grown in the Dominican Republic," a Monsanto spokesman in the United States told AFP.
Monsanto has donated 255,000 dollars to Haiti for disaster relief and the company is committed to the success of Haitian farmers, Monsanto Executive Vice President Jerry Stein wrote in a letter to Agriculture Minister Joanas Gue.
But Chavannes slammed the donation as "a gift of death."
"It's an attack on peasant agriculture, on the farmers, on biodiversity, on native seeds, on what remains of our environment in Haiti."
Many protestors leveled most of their anger against the government.
"I'm here because I'm angry with Preval," said Pierre Charite, a 61-year-old farmer from Haiti's central plateu, where he grows maize, plantains, sugarcane and pistachios. "He accepted corn that is bad, that will kill Haitian corn. I won't use that."
Haitian farmers protest Monsanto seed donations
By Alice Speri
AFP
HINCHE, Haiti - Thousands of farmers marched in central Haiti Friday claiming the government was misleading them with seed donations from US multinational Monsanto.
The region was spared the worst of the January quake which leveled much of the capital Port-au-Prince, but with a dire shortage of seeds in the Caribbean country farmers are struggling to get the supplies to work their land.
Giant company Monsanto is donating 475 tons of maize to Haitian farmers in cooperation with Project Winner, a USAID initiative, which aims to increase the country's agricultural productivity, the agriculture ministry said.
But farmers fear they are being given seeds which could threaten local varieties.
"The Haitian government is using the earthquake to sell the country to the multinationals," charged Jean Baptiste Chavannes, coordinator of the Mouvman Peyizan Papay (MPP), a farming cooperative and one of the leading organizations in Haiti's peasant movement.
Sporting red shirts and straw hats sprayed in signs against President Rene Preval and Monsanto, people rallied under a hot sun in the town of Hinche.
Demonstrators chanted "Down with Preval," "Keep Monsanto Out of Haiti" and the occasional "Down with the Occupation."
Kettly Alexandre, an organizer with the MPP said they estimated the number of participants was between 8,000 and 12,000. There was no immediate confirmation from police.
"We have to fight for our local seeds," Chavannes told the crowd. "We have to defend our food sovereignty."
"This is not just about the seeds," argued Samuel Smith, a 74-year-old organic farmer and long-time supporter of local agriculture, who came for the rally from Massachusetts. "It's about imposing on people a system that they can't get out of."
Monsanto however dismissed fears it was donating genetically modified seeds to the country.
"The seeds Monsanto is donating to Haiti are not genetically modified. They are conventional hybrid seeds that are already grown in the Dominican Republic," a Monsanto spokesman in the United States told AFP.
Monsanto has donated 255,000 dollars to Haiti for disaster relief and the company is committed to the success of Haitian farmers, Monsanto Executive Vice President Jerry Stein wrote in a letter to Agriculture Minister Joanas Gue.
But Chavannes slammed the donation as "a gift of death."
"It's an attack on peasant agriculture, on the farmers, on biodiversity, on native seeds, on what remains of our environment in Haiti."
Many protestors leveled most of their anger against the government.
"I'm here because I'm angry with Preval," said Pierre Charite, a 61-year-old farmer from Haiti's central plateu, where he grows maize, plantains, sugarcane and pistachios. "He accepted corn that is bad, that will kill Haitian corn. I won't use that."
Monday, May 10, 2010
Un nouveau séisme frappe Haïti : Monsanto
Un nouveau séisme frappe Haïti : Monsanto
Père Jean-Yves Urfié
Le tremblement de terre du 12 janvier 2010 a fait des heureux. La multinationale Monsanto va « offrir » aux paysans haïtiens un cadeau empoisonné : 475 tonnes de semences O.G.M., sans compter leurs engrais et pesticides, qui seront distribués gratuitement par le projet WINNER, soutenu par l’ambassade américaine. On croit rêver.
1. Les Haïtiens savent-ils que c’est Monsanto qui fabriquait le défoliant, dit « agent orange », utilisé par les bombardiers américains pendant la guerre du Vietnam, et qui a empoisonné tant de soldats américains et de civils vietnamiens ?
2. Les Haïtiens savent-ils que ces semences sont rejetées comme dangereuses dans beaucoup de pays ? Elles viennent souvent en kit où les semences sont accompagnées d’un herbicide de Monsanto appelé « Roundup », qui contient du glyphosate. Dans ma Bretagne natale, ce produit chimique est dénoncé comme polluant les nappes phréatiques. Comble d’imposture, Monsanto présente le « Roundup » comme biodégradable. Ce qui lui vaut un procès intenté par le service de répression des fraudes de Lyon.
3. Aux U.S.A., une agence fédérale veille sur les questions d’environnement : l’E.P.A. (Environmental Protection Agency). Or, une ancienne dirigeante de Monsanto, Linda Fischer, vient d’être nommée directrice de l’E.P.A. C’est comme si on mettait une chatte à veiller sur la santé des souris !
4. Monsanto a déjà commencé à distribuer des semences O.G.M. de maïs dans les régions de Gonaïves, Kenscoff, Pétion-Ville, Cabaret, Arcahaie, Croix-des-Bouquets et Mirebalais. Bientôt, il n’y aura plus que des semences Monsanto en Haïti. Adieu l’indépendance agricole ! Au Brésil, Monsanto vient d’investir 550 millions de dollars pour fabriquer sur place son dangereux herbicide Roundup, dans le nord-est de l’Etat de Bahia. Heureusement, ce pays semble résister à la multinationale.
5. Monsanto présente ce « don » aux paysans haïtiens comme une aide généreuse. Mais, pour avoir le droit de resemer après, il faudra payer chaque fois des droits à Monsanto. Signalons que le directeur des opérations en Haïti n’est autre que Jean-Robert Estimé, un ancien ministre des affaires étrangères de Duvalier. Monsanto + Duvalier : un beau duo !
Rennes, le 10 mai 2010, anniversaire de l’abolition de l’esclavage en France
P. Jean-Yves Urfié, spiritain
Ancien professeur de chimie au Collège Saint Martial, Port-au-Prince (Haïti)
(Note from Père Jean-Yves Urfié sent via email, on 13 May: "Je dois honnêtement rectifier ma dénonciation, car d'après un agronome digne de foi, il y aurait eu une offre réelle de 400 tonnes de semences OGM, mais le Ministre Gué, personnellement, a rejeté cette offre.")
********************************************
(Réponse)
Haïti: Pas de semences OGM en Haïti !
Le Nouvelliste
12 Mai 2010
(Read the original article here)
Depuis quelque jours, les Organismes génétiquement modifiés (OGM) sont au centre d'une controverse qui n'est ni des plus claires, ni des plus sereines, à la suite d'un don de semences de maïs hybrides offert à l'État haïtien par la multinationale Monsanto. Et cet état de chose a plutôt tendance à s'aggraver au fil du temps avec des informations qui circulent sur le net. Ce qui était au départ un simple débat a pris des allures de polémique. Face aux tensions soulevées par cette affaire, le ministre de l'Agriculture haïtien, Joanas Gué fait le point.
« Nous avons pris toutes les précautions avant d'accepter l'offre de la multinationale Mosanto de faire un don de 475 947 kg de semences de maïs hybride, ainsi que de 2067 kg de semences de légumes. Nous devons aussi mentionner que, en l'absence d'une loi réglementant l'utilisation des Organismes génétiquement modifiés (OGM) en Haïti, je ne peux pas autoriser l'introduction de semences "Roundup ready" ou de toute autre variété transgénétique », a déclaré le ministre de l'Agriculture, Joanas Gué, qui s'exprimait ce mercredi 12 mai 2010, lors d'une conférence de presse.
En effet, le titulaire du ministère de l'Agriculture a dénoncé le sensationnalisme des colporteurs de mensonges qui véhiculent de fausses informations affirmant que l'État haïtien, via le ministère de l"Agriculture, a reçu de la multinationale Monsanto un cadeau empoisonné de semences OGM, qui seront distribuées par le gouvernement haïtien et ses partenaires. Rejetant ces accusations, le ministre Joanas Gué, a fait savoir que le Ministère de l'Agriculture n'a pas reçu de semences OGM.
D'après l'agronome Gué, les hybrides proposés par la Monsanto, notamment le DK 003, le DK 5005 et le DK 1040 sont adaptés aux conditions tropicales et ne sont pas des semences transgéniques. « Haïti n'a pas la capacité de gérer les OGM. Pour pouvoir porter une meilleure surveillance sur les variétés animales et végétales qui rentrent dans le pays, c'est moi qui suis chargé de la signature pour toute introduction de ces produits sur le territoire haïtien », a-t-il renchéri.
Il ajoute que pour redynamiser le secteur agricole, le ministère a lancé au cours de ces trois derniers mois une vaste campagne de production agricole sur plus de 65 000 hectares de terres avec des labourages aux tracteurs, des engrais, des pesticides et un encadrement agricole. Il promet le doublement de la production agricole dans les zones d'intervention , notamment dans la Plaine du Cul-de-sac, à l'Arcahaie, aux Gonaïves et à Kenscoff.
Pour le spécialiste en génétique, Ariel Azaël , les Organismes génétiquement modifiés (OGM) présentent un matériel génétique ou ADN, qui a été modifié d'une manière qui ne peut arriver de façon naturelle. La modification génétique permet à des gènes individuels sélectionnés d'être transférés d'un organisme à un autre, et même entre des espèces n'ayant pas de relations, afin de créer des avantages que l'espèce non modifiée n'a pas, disent les experts. Ce type de méthode est utilisé pour créer des végétaux génétiquement modifiés, qui sont ensuite utilisés pour des cultures comestibles génétiquement modifiées.
Avant de disposer de cette technologie, Ariel Azaël a fait remarquer que pour augmenter les qualités agronomiques des plantes cultivées, les agriculteurs, et les chercheurs en amélioration des plantes utilisaient deux méthodes. Utilisée dès les débuts de l'agriculture, la première méthode était probablement une sélection très empirique : dans un champ, on choisit les plantes qui présentent la meilleure qualité et on s'en sert pour obtenir les semences de la génération suivante.
Depuis le début du 20e siècle, on utilise une méthode plus sophistiquée : production de mutations au hasard avec des agents mutagènes chimiques ou physiques. Il existe des croisements avec d'autres variétés ou espèces voisines pour introduire des gènes intéressants (de résistance aux maladies par exemple). Cette dernière méthode était la plus utilisée jusqu'à ces dernières années. Il s'agit donc bien de créer des plantes génétiquement modifiées, mais avec des méthodes dites « classiques », bien qu'elles ne se contentent pas toujours d'imiter des voies naturelles.
En outre, il faut souligner que dans un article publié dans certains médias en ligne, le père spiritain Jean-Yves Urfié, ancien professeur de chimie au Collège Saint Martial (Port-au-Prince), a fait savoir lundi que le tremblement de terre du 12 janvier 2010 avait fait des heureux, entre autres la multinationale Monsanto.
Se prononçant sur ce don fait par la multinationale Monsanto, le prêtre français se demande perplexe si les Haïtiens savent-ils que c'est Monsanto qui fabriquait le défoliant, dit « agent orange », utilisé par les bombardiers américains pendant la guerre du Vietnam et qui a empoisonné tant de soldats américains et de civils vietnamiens ?
Ce produit chimique est dénoncé comme polluant des nappes phréatiques. Comble d'imposture, Monsanto présente le "Round-up" comme biodégradable, ce qui lui vaut un procès intenté par le service de répression des fraudes de Lyon, affirme encore le prêtre professeur, faisant savoir que la multinationale Monsanto a déjà commencé à distribuer des semences OGM de maïs dans les régions de Gonaïves, Kenscoff, Pétion-Ville, Cabaret, Arcahaie, Croix-des-Bouquets et Mirebalais.
Amos Cincir
mcincir@lenouvelliste.com
Père Jean-Yves Urfié
Le tremblement de terre du 12 janvier 2010 a fait des heureux. La multinationale Monsanto va « offrir » aux paysans haïtiens un cadeau empoisonné : 475 tonnes de semences O.G.M., sans compter leurs engrais et pesticides, qui seront distribués gratuitement par le projet WINNER, soutenu par l’ambassade américaine. On croit rêver.
1. Les Haïtiens savent-ils que c’est Monsanto qui fabriquait le défoliant, dit « agent orange », utilisé par les bombardiers américains pendant la guerre du Vietnam, et qui a empoisonné tant de soldats américains et de civils vietnamiens ?
2. Les Haïtiens savent-ils que ces semences sont rejetées comme dangereuses dans beaucoup de pays ? Elles viennent souvent en kit où les semences sont accompagnées d’un herbicide de Monsanto appelé « Roundup », qui contient du glyphosate. Dans ma Bretagne natale, ce produit chimique est dénoncé comme polluant les nappes phréatiques. Comble d’imposture, Monsanto présente le « Roundup » comme biodégradable. Ce qui lui vaut un procès intenté par le service de répression des fraudes de Lyon.
3. Aux U.S.A., une agence fédérale veille sur les questions d’environnement : l’E.P.A. (Environmental Protection Agency). Or, une ancienne dirigeante de Monsanto, Linda Fischer, vient d’être nommée directrice de l’E.P.A. C’est comme si on mettait une chatte à veiller sur la santé des souris !
4. Monsanto a déjà commencé à distribuer des semences O.G.M. de maïs dans les régions de Gonaïves, Kenscoff, Pétion-Ville, Cabaret, Arcahaie, Croix-des-Bouquets et Mirebalais. Bientôt, il n’y aura plus que des semences Monsanto en Haïti. Adieu l’indépendance agricole ! Au Brésil, Monsanto vient d’investir 550 millions de dollars pour fabriquer sur place son dangereux herbicide Roundup, dans le nord-est de l’Etat de Bahia. Heureusement, ce pays semble résister à la multinationale.
5. Monsanto présente ce « don » aux paysans haïtiens comme une aide généreuse. Mais, pour avoir le droit de resemer après, il faudra payer chaque fois des droits à Monsanto. Signalons que le directeur des opérations en Haïti n’est autre que Jean-Robert Estimé, un ancien ministre des affaires étrangères de Duvalier. Monsanto + Duvalier : un beau duo !
Rennes, le 10 mai 2010, anniversaire de l’abolition de l’esclavage en France
P. Jean-Yves Urfié, spiritain
Ancien professeur de chimie au Collège Saint Martial, Port-au-Prince (Haïti)
(Note from Père Jean-Yves Urfié sent via email, on 13 May: "Je dois honnêtement rectifier ma dénonciation, car d'après un agronome digne de foi, il y aurait eu une offre réelle de 400 tonnes de semences OGM, mais le Ministre Gué, personnellement, a rejeté cette offre.")
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(Réponse)
Haïti: Pas de semences OGM en Haïti !
Le Nouvelliste
12 Mai 2010
(Read the original article here)
Depuis quelque jours, les Organismes génétiquement modifiés (OGM) sont au centre d'une controverse qui n'est ni des plus claires, ni des plus sereines, à la suite d'un don de semences de maïs hybrides offert à l'État haïtien par la multinationale Monsanto. Et cet état de chose a plutôt tendance à s'aggraver au fil du temps avec des informations qui circulent sur le net. Ce qui était au départ un simple débat a pris des allures de polémique. Face aux tensions soulevées par cette affaire, le ministre de l'Agriculture haïtien, Joanas Gué fait le point.
« Nous avons pris toutes les précautions avant d'accepter l'offre de la multinationale Mosanto de faire un don de 475 947 kg de semences de maïs hybride, ainsi que de 2067 kg de semences de légumes. Nous devons aussi mentionner que, en l'absence d'une loi réglementant l'utilisation des Organismes génétiquement modifiés (OGM) en Haïti, je ne peux pas autoriser l'introduction de semences "Roundup ready" ou de toute autre variété transgénétique », a déclaré le ministre de l'Agriculture, Joanas Gué, qui s'exprimait ce mercredi 12 mai 2010, lors d'une conférence de presse.
En effet, le titulaire du ministère de l'Agriculture a dénoncé le sensationnalisme des colporteurs de mensonges qui véhiculent de fausses informations affirmant que l'État haïtien, via le ministère de l"Agriculture, a reçu de la multinationale Monsanto un cadeau empoisonné de semences OGM, qui seront distribuées par le gouvernement haïtien et ses partenaires. Rejetant ces accusations, le ministre Joanas Gué, a fait savoir que le Ministère de l'Agriculture n'a pas reçu de semences OGM.
D'après l'agronome Gué, les hybrides proposés par la Monsanto, notamment le DK 003, le DK 5005 et le DK 1040 sont adaptés aux conditions tropicales et ne sont pas des semences transgéniques. « Haïti n'a pas la capacité de gérer les OGM. Pour pouvoir porter une meilleure surveillance sur les variétés animales et végétales qui rentrent dans le pays, c'est moi qui suis chargé de la signature pour toute introduction de ces produits sur le territoire haïtien », a-t-il renchéri.
Il ajoute que pour redynamiser le secteur agricole, le ministère a lancé au cours de ces trois derniers mois une vaste campagne de production agricole sur plus de 65 000 hectares de terres avec des labourages aux tracteurs, des engrais, des pesticides et un encadrement agricole. Il promet le doublement de la production agricole dans les zones d'intervention , notamment dans la Plaine du Cul-de-sac, à l'Arcahaie, aux Gonaïves et à Kenscoff.
Pour le spécialiste en génétique, Ariel Azaël , les Organismes génétiquement modifiés (OGM) présentent un matériel génétique ou ADN, qui a été modifié d'une manière qui ne peut arriver de façon naturelle. La modification génétique permet à des gènes individuels sélectionnés d'être transférés d'un organisme à un autre, et même entre des espèces n'ayant pas de relations, afin de créer des avantages que l'espèce non modifiée n'a pas, disent les experts. Ce type de méthode est utilisé pour créer des végétaux génétiquement modifiés, qui sont ensuite utilisés pour des cultures comestibles génétiquement modifiées.
Avant de disposer de cette technologie, Ariel Azaël a fait remarquer que pour augmenter les qualités agronomiques des plantes cultivées, les agriculteurs, et les chercheurs en amélioration des plantes utilisaient deux méthodes. Utilisée dès les débuts de l'agriculture, la première méthode était probablement une sélection très empirique : dans un champ, on choisit les plantes qui présentent la meilleure qualité et on s'en sert pour obtenir les semences de la génération suivante.
Depuis le début du 20e siècle, on utilise une méthode plus sophistiquée : production de mutations au hasard avec des agents mutagènes chimiques ou physiques. Il existe des croisements avec d'autres variétés ou espèces voisines pour introduire des gènes intéressants (de résistance aux maladies par exemple). Cette dernière méthode était la plus utilisée jusqu'à ces dernières années. Il s'agit donc bien de créer des plantes génétiquement modifiées, mais avec des méthodes dites « classiques », bien qu'elles ne se contentent pas toujours d'imiter des voies naturelles.
En outre, il faut souligner que dans un article publié dans certains médias en ligne, le père spiritain Jean-Yves Urfié, ancien professeur de chimie au Collège Saint Martial (Port-au-Prince), a fait savoir lundi que le tremblement de terre du 12 janvier 2010 avait fait des heureux, entre autres la multinationale Monsanto.
Se prononçant sur ce don fait par la multinationale Monsanto, le prêtre français se demande perplexe si les Haïtiens savent-ils que c'est Monsanto qui fabriquait le défoliant, dit « agent orange », utilisé par les bombardiers américains pendant la guerre du Vietnam et qui a empoisonné tant de soldats américains et de civils vietnamiens ?
Ce produit chimique est dénoncé comme polluant des nappes phréatiques. Comble d'imposture, Monsanto présente le "Round-up" comme biodégradable, ce qui lui vaut un procès intenté par le service de répression des fraudes de Lyon, affirme encore le prêtre professeur, faisant savoir que la multinationale Monsanto a déjà commencé à distribuer des semences OGM de maïs dans les régions de Gonaïves, Kenscoff, Pétion-Ville, Cabaret, Arcahaie, Croix-des-Bouquets et Mirebalais.
Amos Cincir
mcincir@lenouvelliste.com
The Long View: Haiti Before and After the Earthquake
The Long View: Haiti Before and After the Earthquake
Address delivered by Michael Deibert to the Above Group
Fernandes Industrial Centre, Port of Spain, Trinidad, 30 April 2010
Good evening, and thank you very much to Alex Smailes for that kind introduction and to the Above Group for having me speak here in Port of Spain this evening. As much as Haiti is a world story, it is also empathically a Caribbean story, as well, and that is why I am particularly thankful to address you tonight about this country I have come to know and love so well over many years.
Even before January’s apocalyptic earthquake, much of the what the world knows about Haiti has been of a negative nature, partially the legacy of what Haitian writer and diplomat Frédéric Marcelin in 1904 called “civil strife, fratricidal slaughters, social miseries, economic ignorance and idolatrous militarism.” But there is also so much about Haiti many people don’t know. If people do know, for example, that Haiti was the second independent republic in the Western Hemisphere after the United States, many of them are unaware that one of Haiti’s founding fathers, Henri Christophe, had fought alongside American revolutionary forces at the Battle of Savannah. Many people are unaware that it was the Haitians’ stunning defeat of Napoleon's army - perhaps the greatest military force in the world at the time - that prompted the French dictator to sell Louisiana to the United States, doubling its size. In the lovely city of Jacmel on Haiti’s southern coast, where I once had a small beach cottage and whose colonial zone now lies devastated, the South American leader Simón Bolívar based himself and was provided with material and logistical support at a crucial time during his campaign to liberate the Southern Hemisphere from Spanish rule. People also rarely hear about Haiti’s rich artistic and intellectual culture, perhaps the most impressive in the Caribbean, which produces writers like Jacques Roumain, Jacques Stephen Alexis and Lyonel Trouliot, painters such as Philomé Obin and Stevenson Magloire and musicians such as Toto Bissainthe and Boukman Eksperyans.
Since I first visited Haiti now nearly 15 years ago, I have seen the country in many manifestations. I first saw the early days of the first-term of Haiti’s current president, René Préval, which seemed to many at the time as a simple stop-gap between the two terms of priest-turned-politician Jean-Bertrand Aristide, but which now appears to have been an essential interim of relative peace during which nevertheless the seeds of later political disaster were planted. I saw Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s second term as Haiti’s president, which began with great hope as a man who had been a champion of Haiti's poor returned to office, but which ended in blood and tears as his government descended into a mire of corrupted elections, organized youth gangs and widespread corruption at its highest levels. I saw Haiti during the interim government the ran the country after Aristide’s flight into exile in February 2004, a time when Haiti descended into some of the worst political violence it had ever seen - with a policemen being killed every five days - and I have seen Haiti since René Préval’s second inauguration as its president in May 2006, a time when, despite a series of devastating hurricanes and some questionable political choices, the country, at long last, seemed to be moving, ever gently, towards economic progress. Before the earthquake.
Much has been said and written about the sorry state of Haiti’s politics and the gradual of erosion of what was always a fragile economic base in recent years. Particularly since about 1980, the country has been in an economic freefall Haitians themselves, especially Haiti’s political leaders, bear a share of responsibility for the country’s sorry state, but it must be said that they have had a lot of help
Foreign aid flowed largely unfettered to the Duvalier family dictatorship which ruled Haiti from 1957 until 1986, and since then various political and intelligence elements in Washington courted Haiti’s political actors in ways that often served to muddy and obscure what Washington’s policy towards Haiti actually was, thereby undercutting some of the genuinely democratic elements there, a cynical game at which money was also at play.
Following Mr. Aristide's return to Haiti in 1994, politically connected operators from both political parties in the United States were only to happy to sign off an barely-transparent deals of questionable legality in Haiti in the name of supposedly privatizing the country’s moribund state industries. This was particularly true of the telecommunications sector, which Haiti’s financial intelligence unit and anti-corruption body later found was looted of tens of millions of dollars during the Aristide years, a plunder for their role in which several American businessmen and former Haitian government officials now sit in prison in Miami. American lawyers and lobbyists, likewise, were also all too happy to cynically gobble up some of Haiti’s meagre resources in the name of promoting the Haitian government’s agenda abroad.
Haiti’s peasantry, which makes up a majority of the country’s 9 million people, were suffering grievously even before the earthquake, the victims of both the short-sighted policies of the international community and the venality and brutality of Haiti’s homegrown political leaders. As such, amidst the glittering donor conferences and political pow-wows happening today, I think it is important to realize the fact that the international community policies towards this sector of Haitian society have contributed to its social stresses and economic decay, a litany that would be written as farce had the results not been so tragic.
In the 1940s, the United States sponsored the Société Haitiano-Américaine de Dévelopment Agricole in an ill-fated, half-baked attempted to cultivate rubber in Haiti, an effort that ended up harming the very farmers it was designed to help.
Between 1980 and 1983, when tests showed nearly a quarter of Haiti’s pigs were infected with African Swine Fever, a U.S- Canadian funded program destroyed 1.2 million Kreyol pigs in the country, pigs that formed one of the backbones of the peasant economy. Of the replacement pigs that were delivered, many soon died, unable to adjust to the rough world the Kreyol swine had grown so accustomed to, and the already difficult rural economy suffered another blow.
Further undermining Haiti’s ability to feed itself, President Aristide, implementing an economic adjustment plan mandated by the International Monetary Fund, cut tariffs on rice imports to the country from 35 percent to 3 percent in 1995. This further undermined the peasant economy despite the fact that Haiti for many years had produced low-cost, inexpensive rice for domestic consumption. After 1995, that is, after implementing the economic policies of the international community, it effectively lost the ability to do so.
So the economic policies of the international community, in a very real way, helped drive Haitians off their land and into the labyrinthine slums of Port-au-Prince where so many of them died this past January.
But if we are being honest with ourselves, it must also be fairly said that, as much as Haiti has been failed by the great powers of the world in recent years, events there over the last decade plus and the failure of the wider Caribbean to engage there represents perhaps the greatest failing of CARICOM in the body’s history.
Since Haiti became a full member of CARICOM in 1999, a step that was ratified by the Haitian Parliament on 2002, Haiti - now CARICOM’s most populous member - has too often been treated as a second class citizen by the larger body or, alternatively, as a canvas on which regional leaders attempted to play out what seem to me poorly-informed scenarios of what Haiti is or more accurately should - to them - represent. Even today, despite being full members of CARICOM, the Trinidadian government's own immigration website says that citizens of all CARICOM countries do not require entry visas to enter here, except Haiti.
When CARICOM signed off on Haiti’s deeply-flawed May 2000 legislative elections as free and fair, elections which both the United Nations and Organization of American States refused to endorse, the organization's reputation as a neutral body was badly damaged in the minds of many of those with a stake in Haiti’s political process. When, during Mr. Aristide’s second tenure as Haiti’s president, Caribbean leaders such as Jamaican Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, St. Lucian Prime Minister Kenny Anthony and Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of St. Vincent continued to fête and praise Mr. Aristide despite the growing evidence of the criminality and brutality of his government on the ground in Haiti, the body’s reputation sunk still further.
Although the world at large seems to have forgotten, Haitians remember that when demonstrators, journalists and ordinary civilians were being attacked and sometimes murdered by Mr. Aristide’s security forces and aligned armed gangs in late 2003 and early 2004, the response of Prime Minister Patterson was to open Norman Manley Airport in Kingston to a South African Boeing 707 bound for Haiti with a cargo of some 150 R1 assault rifles, five thousand rounds of ammunition, smoke grenades and bullet-proof vests for a government that was at the time savaging its own citizens with great brutality. South African President Thabo Mbeki circumvented the usually weeks-long approval process of his country’s National Conventional Arms Control Committee to approve and set in motion the arms distribution in a matter of days, and was roundly criticized for this in the South African press, but Mr. Patterson’s role in this has never been fully explained. The plane eventually returned to South Africa with its cargo intact. Today, former Prime Minister Patterson has been named as CARICOM’s Special Representative to Haiti.
Following Mr. Aristide’s ouster, CARICOM called publicly, via two communiques, for an investigation into the circumstances of Aristide’s departure, but never bothered to formally ask the United Nations for one. Talk equalled action, evidently. Likewise, after Hurricane Jeanne, killed over 3,000 people in Haiti in 2004. CARICOM, despite its statements of solidarity, didn’t lift a single finger or contribute a single dollar to alleviate the suffering there, they were nowhere to be found when it really mattered. In CARICOM’s absence, Latin American nations, particularly Brasil, have stepped in to take the lead of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the country.
But even with all of this, there has been a singular endurance to the Haitian character which has taught me much in my time interacting with the Haitian people, and this was nowehere more in evidence than in the aftermath of January’s earthquake. I would like if I may, to give you a picture of what the aftermath of Haiti’s earthquake looked like.
It was Elvis Cineus, a teacher in the town of Leogane, running home to find, under the remains of his home, smashed flat as if pummeled by a giant fist, the bodies of his wife, his nephew, his cousin, and a friend, all dead. He found his 1-year-old son dangling from the building's jagged facade, injured, but alive.
It was two dozen men working in the once-picturesque town of Petit-Goave, set along the glittering Caribbean Sea, labouring all day under the blazing sun with hammers and saws, tearing down what little remained of the town's 208 year-old Église Notre Dame, which once loomed over the city in gleaming blue-and-white relief but collapsed in a matter of seconds, burying market women, passers-by, and people who had paused to rest in its shade
It was young Robert Henry Etienne, walking the dusty streets of the same city with a notebook in hand, carefully cataloging every ruined and damaged structure in meticulous handwriting in the hope that they might one day be rebuilt.
It was Micha Gaillard, a university professor and son of one of Haiti's eminent historians, was one of the first political leaders I met while traveling to Haiti, whom I recall greeting me in his modest home as his wife prepared us coffee. Micha died after the Palais de Justice collapsed on him, in what must have been agony after having been trapped for many hours. Four of the country's foremost feminist thinks -- Myriam Merlet, Magalie Marcelin, Anne Marie Coriolan and Mireille Neptune Anglade -- also died that day. The damage to the country's artistic heritage, from the almost-total collapse of the Episcopal Cathédrale Sainte Trinité, which boasted stunning indigenous murals by eminent Haitian painters, to the loss of much of the Nader art collection, probably the best private collection of Haitian art in the world, is incalculable.
One night, only days after the quake, I found myself cruising thorough the capital on the back of a moto-taxi. A crowded, dirty but also irrepressibly vibrant city during normal times, Port-au- Prince that night presented a landscape that could fairly be described as nightmarish.
Visible through the darkness, the ruined shells of buildings destroyed looked over the fragile forms of hundreds of thousands of people reduced to sleeping in the streets, while in the air mingled the corrosive smell of burning garbage and the vomitous, cloyingly sweet stench of human decay.
Port-au-Prince had never seemed more desperate or defeated.
But the something happened.
Next to the shell of Haiti's Palais National, the hypnotizingly white grand dame of the city's architectural jewels that successive Haitian politicians have fought to control even as their country grew ever-more impoverished and ruined, market women were still frying up marinade and fritay in old steel pots. In the Petionville market, despite the late hour and lack of electricity, goods and fried chicken were still being sold by the orange glow of kerosene lamps. By the following day, dozens of young Haitians had begun sweeping with brooms in front of the ruined Cathédrale Nationale, in preparation for the Saturday funeral on its grounds of Archbishop Serge Miot, who perished within its walls.
"I've worked with this moto for my entire youth," the driver, a young man named Emmanuel, told me that night as we headed up Avenue Pan American, passed the ruins of the United Nations compound where scores of United Nations workers, including mission chief Hédi Annabi, his deputy, Luiz Carlos da Costa, elections chief Gerardo Le Chevallier and scores of other lost their lives.
"Tout moun jwenn," Emmanuel told me as we conversed in Haiti's native Kreyol language.
"Kounye-a, y'ap domi ak Jesu."
Everyone was hit. Now they sleep with Jesus.
Far from being the looting mobs that some media have portrayed them as, hardly anyone who has witnessed the response of the Haitians to this great catastrophe could not be moved by their incredible resilience and solidarity and their intact sense of humor in the face of an unimaginable tragedy.
As all the pillars of the Haitian state -- a state that has often seemed only able to rouse itself to parasitically victimize its own people when it did make its presence felt -- collapsed around them, the Haitians helped one another, dug through rubble, prayed, sang and showed everyone who has watched them what the meaning of true perseverance in the face of adversity looks like, even though the losses were tremendous and irreplaceable.
Sometimes since I had returned to Haiti in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, I felt as if I would be overcome by despair. Looking at block after block of ruins throughout the capital's downtown, or seeing the terrible death and destruction caused by the collapse of the Université de Port-au-Prince, ringed by weeping, desperate relatives of those lost, one almost wanted to turn away.
But the Haitians, always the Haitians, kept one going, and seeing their dignity in this moment has made me love them and their battered country as never before.
"Life goes on," a friend of mine who lost his wife in the earthquake told me, bringing to mind the famous Haitian proverb, deye mon gen mon. Beyond the mountains there are more mountains.
I hope that, as we in the international community move forward with Haiti’s people as they attempt to rebuild their shattered county, we can speak to the best qualities that we in find in them - their incredible resilience, their good humour, their gentleness and laudable work ethic - and are less succeptible to the illusions and self-interest that have driven so much of the international community’s involvement with Haiti in the past.
Step by step, with the right help, I believe that Haiti, a country of personal goodwill and stunning artistic accomplishment as much as it is a place of dysfunctional politics and venal politicians, will indeed rebuild. Perhaps differently than before, but a people who have suffered and endured so much seem, in my conversations with them on street corners under the blazing sun, in tent cities that have sprung up along the roadside, and in grievously affected provincial villages, to be able to withstand even this latest grievous shock and come back swinging.
I hope that we foreigners, who have been so moved by the place, treated so kindly and educated so patiently by its people, will be there to help. Haiti needs its friends now more than ever.
Thank you.
Michael Deibert is a journalist, author and Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies at Coventry University. He is the author of Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti (Seven Stories Press).
Photo © The Above Group
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